This chapter focuses on an event of the postwar period, the Eichmann trial. The trial of Adolf Eichmann was the first fully televised trial in history. It unrolled with microphones poised and cameras ...
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This chapter focuses on an event of the postwar period, the Eichmann trial. The trial of Adolf Eichmann was the first fully televised trial in history. It unrolled with microphones poised and cameras whirring, leaving taped and filmed records alongside printed transcripts. In Israel, “the proceedings could be heard on the public streets, for the radio voice emerged from every window.” In the United States, ABC broadcast weekly summaries. If one thinks of the trial as a media event—cameras rolling all the time—one comes close to capturing an essential part of its ambiance. Eichmann's trial formed a prototype of the modern “celebrity” trial. But his crime really was the crime of the century: “the slaughter of millions of European Jews.”Less

Eichmann's Ghost

Published in print: 2005-05-01

This chapter focuses on an event of the postwar period, the Eichmann trial. The trial of Adolf Eichmann was the first fully televised trial in history. It unrolled with microphones poised and cameras whirring, leaving taped and filmed records alongside printed transcripts. In Israel, “the proceedings could be heard on the public streets, for the radio voice emerged from every window.” In the United States, ABC broadcast weekly summaries. If one thinks of the trial as a media event—cameras rolling all the time—one comes close to capturing an essential part of its ambiance. Eichmann's trial formed a prototype of the modern “celebrity” trial. But his crime really was the crime of the century: “the slaughter of millions of European Jews.”

The Eichmann trial, much like the Nuremberg trials before it, captured some of the perplexities of the emerging norms of cosmopolitan justice. This chapter discusses that since the United Nations ...
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The Eichmann trial, much like the Nuremberg trials before it, captured some of the perplexities of the emerging norms of cosmopolitan justice. This chapter discusses that since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, one has entered a phase in the evolution of global civil society which is characterized by a transition from international norms to cosmopolitan norms of justice. Norms of international justice most commonly arise through treaty obligations and bilateral or multilateral agreements among states and their representatives. They regulate relations among states and other principals that are authorized to act as the agents of states in multiple domains, ranging from trade and commerce to war and security, the environment, and the media. Cosmopolitan norms of justice, whatever the conditions of their legal origination, accrue to individuals as moral and legal persons in a worldwide civil society.Less

The Philosophical Foundations of Cosmopolitan Norms

Seyla Benhabib

Published in print: 2006-11-16

The Eichmann trial, much like the Nuremberg trials before it, captured some of the perplexities of the emerging norms of cosmopolitan justice. This chapter discusses that since the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, one has entered a phase in the evolution of global civil society which is characterized by a transition from international norms to cosmopolitan norms of justice. Norms of international justice most commonly arise through treaty obligations and bilateral or multilateral agreements among states and their representatives. They regulate relations among states and other principals that are authorized to act as the agents of states in multiple domains, ranging from trade and commerce to war and security, the environment, and the media. Cosmopolitan norms of justice, whatever the conditions of their legal origination, accrue to individuals as moral and legal persons in a worldwide civil society.

For many years Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) has been the object of intense debate. After her bitter critiques of Zionism, which seemed to nullify her early involvement with that movement, and her ...
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For many years Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) has been the object of intense debate. After her bitter critiques of Zionism, which seemed to nullify her early involvement with that movement, and her extremely controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Arendt became virtually a taboo figure in Israeli and Jewish circles. Challenging the “curse” of her own title, this book carries the scholarly investigation of this much-discussed writer to the very place where her ideas have been most conspicuously ignored. Sometimes sympathetically, sometimes critically, these distinguished contributors reexamine crucial aspects of Arendt's life and thought: her complex identity as a German Jew; her commitment to and critique of Zionism and the state of Israel; her works on “totalitarianism,” Nazism, and the Eichmann trial; her relationship to key twentieth-century intellectuals; her intimate and tense connections to German culture; and her reworkings of political thought and philosophy in the light of the experience of the twentieth century.Less

Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem

Published in print: 2001-08-01

For many years Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) has been the object of intense debate. After her bitter critiques of Zionism, which seemed to nullify her early involvement with that movement, and her extremely controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Arendt became virtually a taboo figure in Israeli and Jewish circles. Challenging the “curse” of her own title, this book carries the scholarly investigation of this much-discussed writer to the very place where her ideas have been most conspicuously ignored. Sometimes sympathetically, sometimes critically, these distinguished contributors reexamine crucial aspects of Arendt's life and thought: her complex identity as a German Jew; her commitment to and critique of Zionism and the state of Israel; her works on “totalitarianism,” Nazism, and the Eichmann trial; her relationship to key twentieth-century intellectuals; her intimate and tense connections to German culture; and her reworkings of political thought and philosophy in the light of the experience of the twentieth century.

In the decades after the war Jews as genocide victims were not commemorated for they did not fit into a national heroic narrative. In the aftermath of the Eichmann trial in 1961 the Jewish genocide ...
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In the decades after the war Jews as genocide victims were not commemorated for they did not fit into a national heroic narrative. In the aftermath of the Eichmann trial in 1961 the Jewish genocide began to be memorialized. The concept of “the hidden child” emerged following the First International Gathering of Children Hidden during World War II held in New York City in 1991. Hidden children organized, constructed collective memories, and acquired a standing and public voice. Some realized that their rescuers had not been recognized. This leads to an analysis of Yad Vashem, the institution set up to memorialize all aspects of the Holocaust and to honor the Righteous Among the Nations, the non‐Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews. Contemporary concerns with the nature of collective memory frame the aesthetic, social, and political aspects of honoring the Righteous. The commemorative trajectories of Righteous priests and nuns are then compared, and the later recognition of nuns highlighted. The final issue is why the Church did not commemorate the postwar rescue of Jewish children. The chapter focuses on the tensions arising when some Catholic authorities prevented the return of baptized Jewish orphans to their former Jewish identity. The refusal to return the orphaned children was a double annihilation. The commemoration of Father Joseph André and Father Bruno Reynders, who set up their own resistance networks and saved both Jewish adults and children, is discussed as an example of how memory can be universalized. Commemoration can also favor armed resistance over civil resistance and be gendered: a recent plaque, memorializing the Armed Partisans' feat of snatching from a convent and leading to safety a group of girls threatened by deportation, omits mention of Mother Superior Sister Marie‐Aurélie, whose negotiating skills enabled the rescue.Less

Memory and Commemoration

Suzanne Vromen

Published in print: 2008-11-01

In the decades after the war Jews as genocide victims were not commemorated for they did not fit into a national heroic narrative. In the aftermath of the Eichmann trial in 1961 the Jewish genocide began to be memorialized. The concept of “the hidden child” emerged following the First International Gathering of Children Hidden during World War II held in New York City in 1991. Hidden children organized, constructed collective memories, and acquired a standing and public voice. Some realized that their rescuers had not been recognized. This leads to an analysis of Yad Vashem, the institution set up to memorialize all aspects of the Holocaust and to honor the Righteous Among the Nations, the non‐Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews. Contemporary concerns with the nature of collective memory frame the aesthetic, social, and political aspects of honoring the Righteous. The commemorative trajectories of Righteous priests and nuns are then compared, and the later recognition of nuns highlighted. The final issue is why the Church did not commemorate the postwar rescue of Jewish children. The chapter focuses on the tensions arising when some Catholic authorities prevented the return of baptized Jewish orphans to their former Jewish identity. The refusal to return the orphaned children was a double annihilation. The commemoration of Father Joseph André and Father Bruno Reynders, who set up their own resistance networks and saved both Jewish adults and children, is discussed as an example of how memory can be universalized. Commemoration can also favor armed resistance over civil resistance and be gendered: a recent plaque, memorializing the Armed Partisans' feat of snatching from a convent and leading to safety a group of girls threatened by deportation, omits mention of Mother Superior Sister Marie‐Aurélie, whose negotiating skills enabled the rescue.

This chapter examines Hannah Arendt's assessment of the proceedings of the Eichmann trial, particularly her assertion that she encountered “the banality of evil” in the figure of Adolf Eichmann. ...
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This chapter examines Hannah Arendt's assessment of the proceedings of the Eichmann trial, particularly her assertion that she encountered “the banality of evil” in the figure of Adolf Eichmann. Initially, Eichmann was one of only a handful of officials in the Nazi SS whose sole job was to implement the regime's various political and physical solutions for what it identified as its Jewish problem. However, Eichmann stressed repeatedly that he harbored no ill-will towards the Jews and acted out of a sense of responsibility and duty, with an eye towards personal advancement. He had served the regime only as a midlevel bureaucrat on the margins of power, someone who sat at his desk and did his work—evacuating and deporting rather than killing. As such, Arendt saw in Eichmann the embodiment of evil in its total banality.Less

Arendt and the Trial of Adolf Eichmann : Contextualizing the Debate

Valerie Hartouni

Published in print: 2012-08-20

This chapter examines Hannah Arendt's assessment of the proceedings of the Eichmann trial, particularly her assertion that she encountered “the banality of evil” in the figure of Adolf Eichmann. Initially, Eichmann was one of only a handful of officials in the Nazi SS whose sole job was to implement the regime's various political and physical solutions for what it identified as its Jewish problem. However, Eichmann stressed repeatedly that he harbored no ill-will towards the Jews and acted out of a sense of responsibility and duty, with an eye towards personal advancement. He had served the regime only as a midlevel bureaucrat on the margins of power, someone who sat at his desk and did his work—evacuating and deporting rather than killing. As such, Arendt saw in Eichmann the embodiment of evil in its total banality.

This chapter approaches Hannah Arendt's view of the Eichmann trial from one vantage point that is sometimes overlooked — legal argumentation, which in fact preoccupied Arendt from the very moment she ...
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This chapter approaches Hannah Arendt's view of the Eichmann trial from one vantage point that is sometimes overlooked — legal argumentation, which in fact preoccupied Arendt from the very moment she heard of Eichmann's capture and considered covering the trial for the New Yorker. This is not to ignore some obvious instances of personal antipathies, blinkered views, and simple prejudices in her narrative — which was intended, one must recall, as a journalistic account, and not a learned evaluation. It is rather to suggest that Arendt's “agenda” was quite different from our own, in which identity politics comes so quickly to the fore. In thinking of the Eichmann trial Arendt operated very much in the shadow of the Nuremberg tribunal and therefore had a point of reference quite different from that of many of her critics. She was primarily concerned with how legal systems, both at Nuremberg and in Jerusalem, could “deal with the facts of administrative massacres organized by the state apparatus” — what she understood as a radically new order of criminality, one of the outstanding characteristics of modern times.Less

Eichmann in Jerusalem : Justice and History

Michael R. Marrus

Published in print: 2001-08-01

This chapter approaches Hannah Arendt's view of the Eichmann trial from one vantage point that is sometimes overlooked — legal argumentation, which in fact preoccupied Arendt from the very moment she heard of Eichmann's capture and considered covering the trial for the New Yorker. This is not to ignore some obvious instances of personal antipathies, blinkered views, and simple prejudices in her narrative — which was intended, one must recall, as a journalistic account, and not a learned evaluation. It is rather to suggest that Arendt's “agenda” was quite different from our own, in which identity politics comes so quickly to the fore. In thinking of the Eichmann trial Arendt operated very much in the shadow of the Nuremberg tribunal and therefore had a point of reference quite different from that of many of her critics. She was primarily concerned with how legal systems, both at Nuremberg and in Jerusalem, could “deal with the facts of administrative massacres organized by the state apparatus” — what she understood as a radically new order of criminality, one of the outstanding characteristics of modern times.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, which was an especially important event for a number of reasons. First, it was televised and presented as a ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, which was an especially important event for a number of reasons. First, it was televised and presented as a major news story in the United States. Second, the trial shed an entirely new light on a dimension of World War II that many insist had been ignored, misnamed, or downplayed at Nuremberg: that Hitler's war had been driven by a dangerous anti-Semitism and waged in large measure against the Jews of Europe for whom a “Final Solution” had been imagined and partially implemented. Finally, the Eichmann trial is especially important because it begins to organize the Holocaust in large measure as people know and understand it today—as a discrete and coherent event with a distinct narrative structure and set of moral incitements.Less

Introduction

Valerie Hartouni

Published in print: 2012-08-20

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, which was an especially important event for a number of reasons. First, it was televised and presented as a major news story in the United States. Second, the trial shed an entirely new light on a dimension of World War II that many insist had been ignored, misnamed, or downplayed at Nuremberg: that Hitler's war had been driven by a dangerous anti-Semitism and waged in large measure against the Jews of Europe for whom a “Final Solution” had been imagined and partially implemented. Finally, the Eichmann trial is especially important because it begins to organize the Holocaust in large measure as people know and understand it today—as a discrete and coherent event with a distinct narrative structure and set of moral incitements.

The chapter glosses the notion of a weak messianic power, arguing that it be understood first and foremost in terms of unrealized potential and latent potency. What remains unrealized, Benjamin ...
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The chapter glosses the notion of a weak messianic power, arguing that it be understood first and foremost in terms of unrealized potential and latent potency. What remains unrealized, Benjamin suggests, stays with us, remaining not merely as a lingering echo but as a secretly insistent appeal. What speaks to us out of the past, what summons us to a secret appointment with it, is strictly speaking that which will never have belonged to it or that which will have belonged only as a missed possibility and unrealized potential. Because such appeals involve speech of another nature they require from the addressee a special attunement, perhaps even a certain mode of unconscious receptivity. The chapter argues that the materialist historian is such an addressee and that his work consists in attuning himself to the repetition of traumatic moments in Benjamin’s own writings as well as to key moments of testimonial failure in the Eichmann trial. These moments remain literally unforgettable and as such function as the sign of a constantly replayed and still ungrasped kernel of collective memory. Such replays are understood as traumatic flashbacks, as the insistent appeal of what speaks to us out of a certain historical unconscious.Less

The Day the Sun Stood Still : Benjamin’s Theses, Celan’s Realignments, Trauma, and the Eichmann Trial

Michael G. Levine

Published in print: 2013-10-01

The chapter glosses the notion of a weak messianic power, arguing that it be understood first and foremost in terms of unrealized potential and latent potency. What remains unrealized, Benjamin suggests, stays with us, remaining not merely as a lingering echo but as a secretly insistent appeal. What speaks to us out of the past, what summons us to a secret appointment with it, is strictly speaking that which will never have belonged to it or that which will have belonged only as a missed possibility and unrealized potential. Because such appeals involve speech of another nature they require from the addressee a special attunement, perhaps even a certain mode of unconscious receptivity. The chapter argues that the materialist historian is such an addressee and that his work consists in attuning himself to the repetition of traumatic moments in Benjamin’s own writings as well as to key moments of testimonial failure in the Eichmann trial. These moments remain literally unforgettable and as such function as the sign of a constantly replayed and still ungrasped kernel of collective memory. Such replays are understood as traumatic flashbacks, as the insistent appeal of what speaks to us out of a certain historical unconscious.

This concluding chapter reexamines Arendt's widely considered but enigmatic characterization of evil as banal; what “this long course of wickedness had taught us,” she wrote at the end of her report ...
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This concluding chapter reexamines Arendt's widely considered but enigmatic characterization of evil as banal; what “this long course of wickedness had taught us,” she wrote at the end of her report on the trial of Eichmann, was a lesson about the “word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.” In Arendt's view, it was Eichmann's thoughtlessness—his refusal to test or examine received opinions or take his bearings from the awareness he clearly had of what was happening and how and to whom—that predisposed him, “to become one of the greatest criminals of the period.” Arendt also links his thoughtlessness to a failure of judgment for which thinking clears the way.Less

The Banality of Evil

Valerie Hartouni

Published in print: 2012-08-20

This concluding chapter reexamines Arendt's widely considered but enigmatic characterization of evil as banal; what “this long course of wickedness had taught us,” she wrote at the end of her report on the trial of Eichmann, was a lesson about the “word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.” In Arendt's view, it was Eichmann's thoughtlessness—his refusal to test or examine received opinions or take his bearings from the awareness he clearly had of what was happening and how and to whom—that predisposed him, “to become one of the greatest criminals of the period.” Arendt also links his thoughtlessness to a failure of judgment for which thinking clears the way.

This chapter examines the paradoxes of the post-World War II human rights regime. This new regime bestowed upon the nation-state—one of the major violators of human rights—the responsibility of ...
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This chapter examines the paradoxes of the post-World War II human rights regime. This new regime bestowed upon the nation-state—one of the major violators of human rights—the responsibility of protecting human rights. It then turns to Israel to show how the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 was crafted as a form of human rights reparation for the horrific crimes carried out against European Jews. This reparation, however, translated into the dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population. Turning to the Eichmann trial, the authors go on to illustrate how the universal human rights discourse was nationalized in Israel and how the notion of human rights informed by a universal aspiration only reappeared in Israel/Palestine after the eruption of the first Intifada in 1987. The chapter concludes by describing the second Intifada and the military campaigns in Gaza, while showing that in the local political arena human rights often served to normalize the colonial relations between Israelis and Palestinians rather than challenging them.Less

The Paradox of Human Rights

Nicola PeruginiNeve Gordon

Published in print: 2015-08-01

This chapter examines the paradoxes of the post-World War II human rights regime. This new regime bestowed upon the nation-state—one of the major violators of human rights—the responsibility of protecting human rights. It then turns to Israel to show how the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 was crafted as a form of human rights reparation for the horrific crimes carried out against European Jews. This reparation, however, translated into the dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population. Turning to the Eichmann trial, the authors go on to illustrate how the universal human rights discourse was nationalized in Israel and how the notion of human rights informed by a universal aspiration only reappeared in Israel/Palestine after the eruption of the first Intifada in 1987. The chapter concludes by describing the second Intifada and the military campaigns in Gaza, while showing that in the local political arena human rights often served to normalize the colonial relations between Israelis and Palestinians rather than challenging them.

This chapter provides a critical review of the Milgram experimental studies of obedience that were premised on Hannah Arendt’s conclusion that the Holocaust arose from the banality of evil. Milgram’s ...
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This chapter provides a critical review of the Milgram experimental studies of obedience that were premised on Hannah Arendt’s conclusion that the Holocaust arose from the banality of evil. Milgram’s work developed at the time of Adolph Eichmann’s trial for genocide in Jerusalem. A closer look at the original work raises alternative understandings that suggest that subjects in the study were 2.57 times as likely to be defiant of pressure to conform when they believed that ‘The Learner’ was being injured. The received view of the study suggests that the perpetrators were agentless ‘desk murderers’ who acted without any sense of responsibility. The actual perpetrators of genocide were not acting under bureaucratic duress, as the experiment implies, as much as a positive sense of duty, something they typically undertook with zeal. This requires us to develop an understanding of genocide that goes beyond the banality of evil.Less

Genocide and the Obedience Paradigm

Augustine Brannigan

Published in print: 2013-08-22

This chapter provides a critical review of the Milgram experimental studies of obedience that were premised on Hannah Arendt’s conclusion that the Holocaust arose from the banality of evil. Milgram’s work developed at the time of Adolph Eichmann’s trial for genocide in Jerusalem. A closer look at the original work raises alternative understandings that suggest that subjects in the study were 2.57 times as likely to be defiant of pressure to conform when they believed that ‘The Learner’ was being injured. The received view of the study suggests that the perpetrators were agentless ‘desk murderers’ who acted without any sense of responsibility. The actual perpetrators of genocide were not acting under bureaucratic duress, as the experiment implies, as much as a positive sense of duty, something they typically undertook with zeal. This requires us to develop an understanding of genocide that goes beyond the banality of evil.

From 1943 to 1945, many nacionalistas saw Peronism as representing exactly what all nacionalistas had wanted: a strong antiliberal movement with a strong military leader and an astonishing new ...
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From 1943 to 1945, many nacionalistas saw Peronism as representing exactly what all nacionalistas had wanted: a strong antiliberal movement with a strong military leader and an astonishing new feature, namely a working-class base. From 1946 to1955 many of them became wary of the idiosyncrasies of Perón’s brand of populism. Once the Peronist regime was gone, two neofascist organizations emerged: Tacuara and the Triple A. They shared many members, an extreme anti-Semitism, and terrorist forms of political violence. The two groups also shared a close relationship with the security forces and the army, as well as connections to the “hard-core“ sectors of Peronist trade unionism. As Tacuara had done before, the Triple A operated in a gray zone located somewhere between radical politics and mere criminality.Less

Bombs, Death, and Ideology

Federico Finchelstein

Published in print: 2014-04-18

From 1943 to 1945, many nacionalistas saw Peronism as representing exactly what all nacionalistas had wanted: a strong antiliberal movement with a strong military leader and an astonishing new feature, namely a working-class base. From 1946 to1955 many of them became wary of the idiosyncrasies of Perón’s brand of populism. Once the Peronist regime was gone, two neofascist organizations emerged: Tacuara and the Triple A. They shared many members, an extreme anti-Semitism, and terrorist forms of political violence. The two groups also shared a close relationship with the security forces and the army, as well as connections to the “hard-core“ sectors of Peronist trade unionism. As Tacuara had done before, the Triple A operated in a gray zone located somewhere between radical politics and mere criminality.

Much of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length work. This book ...
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Much of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length work. This book examines the background of the Holocaust and genocide through the prism of the law; the criminal and civil prosecution of the Nazis and their collaborators for Holocaust-era crimes; and contemporary attempts to criminally prosecute perpetrators for the crime of genocide. This book has three parts. The first part presents the history of the Holocaust as a legal event. It also describes how genocide has become known as the “crime of crimes.” The second part discusses post-Holocaust legal topics, namely, the criminal prosecution of Nazi war criminals, including the Eichmann trial in Israel and prosecutions in Germany and the United States; Holocaust restitution civil litigation in the United States and the use of this litigation as a model for recognition of financial crimes committed during other mass atrocities; laws in Europe criminalizing Holocaust denial and efforts to criminalize denial of other genocides; and the impact of Nazi crimes on post-Holocaust jurisprudence. The third part examines the Holocaust as a catalyst for post-Holocaust international justice, specifically, the resurrection of the Nuremberg process as a model for international criminal prosecutions and how genocide is prosecuted today. Together, this collection of subjects establishes a new legal discipline, which this book labels “Post-Holocaust Law.”Less

Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law : A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World

Michael Bazyler

Published in print: 2017-01-03

Much of contemporary law has a direct connection to the Holocaust. That connection, however, is seldom acknowledged in legal texts and has never been the subject of a full-length work. This book examines the background of the Holocaust and genocide through the prism of the law; the criminal and civil prosecution of the Nazis and their collaborators for Holocaust-era crimes; and contemporary attempts to criminally prosecute perpetrators for the crime of genocide. This book has three parts. The first part presents the history of the Holocaust as a legal event. It also describes how genocide has become known as the “crime of crimes.” The second part discusses post-Holocaust legal topics, namely, the criminal prosecution of Nazi war criminals, including the Eichmann trial in Israel and prosecutions in Germany and the United States; Holocaust restitution civil litigation in the United States and the use of this litigation as a model for recognition of financial crimes committed during other mass atrocities; laws in Europe criminalizing Holocaust denial and efforts to criminalize denial of other genocides; and the impact of Nazi crimes on post-Holocaust jurisprudence. The third part examines the Holocaust as a catalyst for post-Holocaust international justice, specifically, the resurrection of the Nuremberg process as a model for international criminal prosecutions and how genocide is prosecuted today. Together, this collection of subjects establishes a new legal discipline, which this book labels “Post-Holocaust Law.”

This chapter discusses the duties and functions of the attorney general in Israel, as well as the tenures of some notable personalities appointed to the post. The country’s first minister of justice, ...
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This chapter discusses the duties and functions of the attorney general in Israel, as well as the tenures of some notable personalities appointed to the post. The country’s first minister of justice, Pinhas Rosen, insisted that the person responsible for advising the government will not be the minister of justice but an attorney general subordinate to him. The first person to fill the post was Yaakov-Shimshon Shapira, a member of Mapai, a well-regarded private attorney, and a man of great authority. The post was next offered to State Attorney Haim Cohn, who had close relations with Ben-Gurion. Cohn’s successor was Gideon Hausner, an active member of Rosen’s Progressive Party. Hausner was the prosecutor in Eichmann’s trial. During Hausner’s term a dispute arose between him and the minister of justice Dov Yosef regarding the attorney general’s powers. The matter was referred to a committee headed by justice Agranat. Hausner’s term was followed by Meir Shamgar, the Israel Defense Forces’ chief military advocate-general during the Six Day War. Last to be discussed is Aharon Barak, a professor of law and dean of the Hebrew University law school.Less

The Attorney General and His Powers

Daniel Friedmann

Published in print: 2016-09-22

This chapter discusses the duties and functions of the attorney general in Israel, as well as the tenures of some notable personalities appointed to the post. The country’s first minister of justice, Pinhas Rosen, insisted that the person responsible for advising the government will not be the minister of justice but an attorney general subordinate to him. The first person to fill the post was Yaakov-Shimshon Shapira, a member of Mapai, a well-regarded private attorney, and a man of great authority. The post was next offered to State Attorney Haim Cohn, who had close relations with Ben-Gurion. Cohn’s successor was Gideon Hausner, an active member of Rosen’s Progressive Party. Hausner was the prosecutor in Eichmann’s trial. During Hausner’s term a dispute arose between him and the minister of justice Dov Yosef regarding the attorney general’s powers. The matter was referred to a committee headed by justice Agranat. Hausner’s term was followed by Meir Shamgar, the Israel Defense Forces’ chief military advocate-general during the Six Day War. Last to be discussed is Aharon Barak, a professor of law and dean of the Hebrew University law school.

This chapter reviews Michal Shaul’s Pe’er taḥat ‘efer: haḥevrah haḥaredit beyisrael betzel hashoah 1945–1961 (Beauty for Ashes: Holocaust Memory and the Rehabilitation of Ashkenazi Haredi Society in Israel 1945–1961), which attempts to portray haredi society in Israel and its attitude toward the Holocaust between the end of the last world war and 1961. Although Shaul’s book is well-researched and well-written, the reader at times misses the hand of a competent editor who might have encouraged her to add a few words of historical explanation at critical junctures. For example, there is no real discourse regarding the significance of the chronology in Shaul’s chosen title. At the same time, Shaul would have done well to provide some explanation of the significance of the Eichmann trial for the haredi public in Israel. And while she does include a short discussion in her opening chapter about prewar versus postwar haredi society, Shaul never actually notes that, during the period covered by her book, it was not common for haredi survivors to refer to themselves as “haredim” or even “ultra-Orthodox.” There is also a less than sufficient effort to locate this population within the broader framework of Israeli society.Less

Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

Published in print: 2016-12-01

This chapter reviews Michal Shaul’s Pe’er taḥat ‘efer: haḥevrah haḥaredit beyisrael betzel hashoah 1945–1961 (Beauty for Ashes: Holocaust Memory and the Rehabilitation of Ashkenazi Haredi Society in Israel 1945–1961), which attempts to portray haredi society in Israel and its attitude toward the Holocaust between the end of the last world war and 1961. Although Shaul’s book is well-researched and well-written, the reader at times misses the hand of a competent editor who might have encouraged her to add a few words of historical explanation at critical junctures. For example, there is no real discourse regarding the significance of the chronology in Shaul’s chosen title. At the same time, Shaul would have done well to provide some explanation of the significance of the Eichmann trial for the haredi public in Israel. And while she does include a short discussion in her opening chapter about prewar versus postwar haredi society, Shaul never actually notes that, during the period covered by her book, it was not common for haredi survivors to refer to themselves as “haredim” or even “ultra-Orthodox.” There is also a less than sufficient effort to locate this population within the broader framework of Israeli society.